U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry signals he may scale back effort to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace in view of 'unhelpful actions' by both sides.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says it is “reality-check time” when it comes to the Mideast peace process.

By:Paul RichterMcClatchy-Tribune, Published on Fri Apr 04 2014

WASHINGTON—U.S.Secretary of State John F. Kerry signalled Friday that he may scale back his intense effort to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace in view of the “unhelpful actions” on both sides in recent days.

With the parties at an impasse, Kerry said it was “reality-check time” because “there are limits to the amount of time and effort that the United States can spend if the parties themselves are unwilling to take constructive steps in order to be able to move forward.”

Though neither side has called off the talks, “we are not going to sit there indefinitely,” Kerry said during a news conference in Morocco, where he stopped at the end of a weeklong trip to the Middle East and Europe. “It is not an open-ended effort.”

He said he would return to Washington to confer with President Barack Obama before taking more steps in the effort, which has produced few, if any, visible signs of progress. Though U.S. officials can push for peace, “the leaders have to make these decisions,” he said.

Kerry’s eight-month effort has teetered on the edge of collapse in recent days as Israel has refused to release more Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinians have formally applied to join 15 international organizations in hopes of using membership to apply new diplomatic pressure on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two sides have been trying to negotiate the creation of a separate Palestinian state.

The collapse of talks would be a personal blow to Kerry, who has devoted much time and energy to the peacemaking effort, and to the Obama administration, which aborted a first peacemaking effort in 2010.

However, many analysts believe it is more likely that the effort will not be abandoned but simply assigned a lower priority, an approach that would reduce the risk of an outbreak of Palestinian violence and allow the parties to seek progress on secondary issues at least.

Officials on each side in the negotiations, worried about being blamed for any breakdown of talks, argued Friday that the other side didn’t want to make concessions needed for peace, and deserved responsibility for the impasse.

Palestinian officials contended that Israel’s unwillingness to release an additional 26 Palestinian prisoners last Saturday had brought on the breakdown. Israel argued that it should not be obliged to release more prisoners when the Palestinians were not committing to continuing the negotiations.

Israeli officials contended that the Palestinians had recently stepped up their conditions for a continuation of talks, now wanting commitments that Israel would agree to a Palestinian state along the border lines from before the 1967 war as well as the release of 1,200 Palestinian prisoners.